How to Make Your Small Business More Competitive

How to make your small business more competitive over other big businesses? How can you win the big business and market competition against your big competitors? These questions are similar to finding a way to win a war against your big opponents, who possess bigger weapons, higher monetary fund, larger manpower and superior technology advantage. Though we are not going to enter into a battle where the literal blood and lives are at stake, we are going to enter into a similar fight where similar fighting tactics can be used to claim victory.

Despite of doing business in a smaller scale compare with the giants, we can still control our own success. The following are the best business marketing tactics and strategies you can use to make your small business more competitive.

1. Overcome yourself

We should first win from the inside, that is, to win ourselves. We should remember that our most difficult business rival is ourselves. Thus, we need to defeat personal greed, fraud, indolence, procrastination and other personal weaknesses. If we can do this, we already have an advantage over our greedy, fraudulent, lazy and personally wicked competitors, who are the owners of bigger companies or enterprises.

2. Conquer your own people

If you want to overcome other business organizations, then you should first conquer your own organization. You should conquer your own people by getting their loyalty, trust and confidence in you. Here, you need to have the ability to inspire and influence people. If you have conquered yourself and became self-motivated, then you’ll have the bigger chance to motivate the people inside your organization. If you will have a united and well-organized business, you’ll also earn an edge over your bigger business competitors whose people within their organizations are breaking apart.

3. Win your customers

When it comes to winning customers, your giant competitors have the advantage of having bigger financial equity, manpower and even technology. Thus, it’s difficult to contest them based on those grounds. What we can do is to contest them on the grounds where small and big businesses become equal. These are the battle grounds where money, manpower and cost of technology don’t really matter. These include the following:

a. On quality of products. Having a small business doesn’t mean we also have small capabilities to produce quality in our products or provide quality in our services. The cost of production is matched with the income generated from the sale of products. Consumers pay for value. Hence, you don’t need to become a giant corporation to provide high quality goods or services to your customers. In this ground, we can make our products more competitive by assuring quality and guaranteeing customers’ satisfaction.

b. On customer care
Care is a priceless thing that we can give to our customers. You don’t need to have millions or billions of dollars to give care. You can simply beat your big business competitors by simply giving extra care to your customers, such as by always smiling to them, greeting them to brighten up their days, accommodating their concerns, addressing their feedbacks, giving them the feeling of comfort and convenience, and maintaining a long-term friendship and warm relationship with them.

c. On the Internet
Nowadays, small businessmen and entrepreneurs can afford to have their own business website or blog, create their Facebook page, create their Twitter account, and make significant online presence on the Internet. In this social media era, access to the local and global market is becoming more affordable than ever. Thus, in this ground, small business owners have a fairer fight to win against their bigger competitors. The Internet is a world for finding answers and information. Thus, if you want to win in this ground, you should get more followers by providing them with more useful information and solutions.

d. On the public support
Your existing and prospective customers are part of the public. Therefore, if you will earn their support, you’ll be more likely to win your customers. But how can we get the public’s support? The answer lies on the golden rule or the ethic of reciprocity, that is, to do what you want them to do to you. In other words, you should support the public to make them support you. Would this mean financial support? Not necessarily but it may involve some amounts of money which you can actually afford. You can gain the confidence of the public by supporting the environment – have a green business. You can also pay your taxes faithfully and gain integrity and public trust. You can also promote strong public advocacies, such as the fight for poverty, the movement for health and education, the appeal to save our planet, the preservation of family values and more. It’s not costly, and I even do it on my own blog and Facebook page.

I hope you are now more prepared to take the honor and courage in facing your bigger business competitors. Remember that business competition is a matter of cooperation towards the universal goal of giving value to customers and other stakeholders. The business, whether small or big, that will not cooperate in this goal will eventually taste defeat. On the contrary, the business that will give the greatest cooperation on that objective will become the biggest winner. So compete and fight with all your might for the sake of your customers and all of your business stakeholders.

Victorino Abrugar is a business consultant, blogger, speaker and entrepreneur. He's the founder of Optixor, Inc., a digital marketing company based in the Philippines. Follow him on Twitter at @viclogic.